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Traditional interviews have been industry standard for decades, with questions designed to dig through a candidate’s experience and skills to figure out if they’re a job and culture fit. Though popular, they aren’t always the best way to size up a candidate.

According to the 2018 Global Recruiting Trends report by Linkedin, traditional interview processes are particularly bad at assessing the soft skills of candidates and understanding their weaknesses. Moreover, it can be difficult for interviewers to stay unbiased and always ask the right questions.

Whether you realize it or not, there’s a high chance these issues are plaguing your current hiring process. It’s time to revisit the foundations of your interview process and look at some new methods that are more in tune with the current climate.

Video Interviews

Programmed or one-way video interviews are revolutionary. They let candidates record their responses to preset questions, in their own time and without the interviewer present. This makes it a great preliminary method of screening applicants, allowing recruiters to quickly shortlist candidates for the next round.

With these kinds of video interviews, you can easily set parameters such as:

Think Time: How long candidates can formulate their responses before recording starts

Take Limit: Maximum number of attempts that are allowed for every answer

Answer Length: Maximum duration of the answer to a given question

While the benefits for recruiters are obvious, candidates gain as well. They’ll love having a flexible interview schedule, reducing the risk of a no-show and significantly ramping up the chances of a great first impression on both sides.

Casual Interviews

Soft skills and team ethics are more valuable than ever. There are already solutions that use neuroscience to assess factors that affect job performance, such as flexibility and flair. But implementing them right away might be jumping the gun.

Instead, begin by interacting with candidates in a real world setting that motivates them to break out of their shell. Linkedin Business reports that more than half of recruiters and hiring managers realize the benefits of such interviews.

So why does it help to interview in a casual setting, such as over lunch or coffee?

It brings out the natural personality of your candidates.

It gives a great first impression of your company and work culture.

It doesn’t require considerable investment or special preparation.

Job Auditions

A win-win situation for both parties, job auditions give promising candidates a taste of the action for a day. This shadow experience helps you analyze how well someone might actually perform on the job, and gives candidates an inside look into expectations and company culture.

Everyone gets to know exactly what they’d be signing up for, which is bound to have a long-term positive effect on attrition rates.

Some candidates may not have a knack for interviews but might turn out to be your best hires in other high-pressure situations. Testing them is the most reliable way to find out if this is true. Even if it doesn’t work out, the feedback you receive will probably be much more valuable in the long run.

VR Assessment

New-age technologies such as virtual reality have made their way into the recruiting profession, helping employers tap into the psychological and behavioral traits of potential candidates. It’s a far more polished assessment system compared to traditional methods, which is why companies use VR analysis to: